Ask HN: AI Panic, you buying it?

This is not AI waking up and deciding to merc us, which is what normies think we're talking about.

For a while the hottest (stupid but still the only hot one) topic was crypto. We had this for quite a while. I believe this was because we hit walls left and right on how to progress further.

Then GPT-3 came out and made it very clear for a lot of capital and actors were it is going.

Machine Learning and types of it like LLMs need massive compute and massive amount of data.

So suddenly we discovered a way forward for optimizing and automating things no one thought would be possible: Software development and computer use and basically everhting digital. In parallel this Machine Learning push became relevant for robotics too. But LLMs delivered something fundamental to robotics: Language and a tremendesly good interface for humans.

Now we have a massive amount of capital in form of VC who wants to disrupt the next market. China is doing this with manufacturing, so what is left? Everything which was not touchable.

Now it is.

And it doesn't just allow for alot of automatistaion, it hits us were it hurts: Software bugs, security, fraud, scams etc.

It isn't just automatisation and getting more money, its also a weapon (CVEs, Statesecrets, propaganda, etc.)

So we don't have just a handful of VCs investing in this, we have the richest countries on the planet investing in this. We also have the fastest moving companies investing in this. The best connected ones, with a massive amount of very smart people.

Google has massive compute, its own network around the globe and massivly overpayed smart people. Microsoft, Amazon and even Meta has crazy amount of money too.

Then we have state actors like USA vs. China vs. hust Europe.

I also have never seen any technology progressing that fast. Image generation was unthinkable, now we can generate whatever we want. Video? Can now be done in real time. Text? No brainer.

GPT Astra can use Blender very very well and that only after 6 years of progress.

These 'stupid' LLMs reduced already the price of making Websites, basic 3D models, basic research etc. basically free in comparision.

So now we ned to find back to your question about eliminiating humanity: We have seen unrest in the last few years for a lot of basic human reasons. We as a plent are rich enough to take care of everyone on our planet. we do not do that thats why unrest can happen very fast.

In the USA alone A LOT of people have weapons. Around the globe people will unrest due to fuel shortage, disruption of supply chains etc.

We have state actors like Isreal who tried to attack Iran with Stuxnet, we have Russia which manipulated the elections of Europe and USA. We have high inflation, oil crisis.

And now we have a very fast moving and progressing technology which will add fuel to it and might eliminate quite a lot of white collar jobs. This will lead to more pressure on blue collar jobs.

We as a society are very bad in acting fast and the industrial revolution was, at that time, very bad for a lot of people.

There is only one russia necessary running GPU clusters of uncensored LLM model to start pushing boundaries left and right. One Isreal doing something fucked up or one Donald Trump.

Software is very shitty in a lot of places and the most complex thing we humans manage. A lot of shit wasn't found or solved because of the time and effort and people needed to find it.

Now the last Ubuntu LTS had over 900 CVEs, my own systems were attackable 3x this year already.

I don't want to say it will happen, but I do think we should be very careful of how we progress and for a lot of people the next 5-30 years will be very very disruptive. It is already disruptive to 'others' we might not count but let it be clear: all of these people who lost their jobs to AI already, it counted for them.